Group Takes Out Full-Page Ad In Paper Against Awarding Defense Dept. Contract To Trump ‘Enemy’ Jeff Bezos

A nonprofit organization has taken out a full-page ad in the New York Post seemingly hitting the Trump administration for mulling the possibility of awarding Amazon with a lucrative contract to provide IT services to the Defense Department.

https://twitter.com/ArthurSchwartz/status/978719163459035136

The ad by ‘Less Government’ reads: “President Trump: Your Defense Department is set to award a no-bid, ten-year contract for all its IT infrastructure to Administration-enemy Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.

The ad also includes a mock letter written by Bezos to Trump that reads:

“Mr. President,

Thank you for the $100 billion handout. The cash will really help my many other efforts to oppose your administration’s policies. Your pal, Jeff. Owner, Amazon & The Washington Post.”

Axios‘ Jonathan Swan believes the ad could be an effective way to catch Trump’s attention.

“[I]f you’re designing an ad to get POTUS’ attention, you can’t do much better than this.”

https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/978724509275643904

The nonprofit operates an initiative called Monopoly Amazon, aimed at raising awareness of the dangers of the Trump administration doing business with Bezos.

The group’s ad is based off a NextGov report from December 2017:

The Defense Department’s developing cloud strategy has put the tech industry on edge.

According to an internal strategy document obtained by Nextgov, the Pentagon aims to award a 10-year cloud computing contract—potentially worth billions—to a single company by the fourth quarter of 2018.

The contract would call on one commercial cloud service provider to host unclassified, secret and top secret Defense Department data, and the Pentagon’s approach mirrors the CIA’s enterprisewide approach to cloud four years ago, which resulted in a 10-year, $600 million contract with Amazon Web Services. AWS has since invested heavily to provide capabilities across all data classification levels.

The similarities between the Defense’s early cloud strategy and the CIA’s has rival tech companies worried that the department’s acquisition may lean toward AWS. In any case, such a massive contract could disrupt the $100 billion federal IT market and leave the winner in a position to dominate it for years to come.

Earlier this month, the DoD announced it would be scaling back its potential near $1-billion agreement with Amazon for cloud services to $65-million.

 

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